<p>In 1930, John Maynard Keynes prophesied that within a century, technology would advance so rapidly that we’d work just 15 hours a week. The rest, he said, would be ‘leisure filled with wisdom.’ It is 2025 now. We have the technology; indeed, machines now write code, generate poetry, diagnose illnesses, and trade stocks. But Keynes’ utopia has curdled into something else entirely; underemployment, precarity, and a deepening crisis of human worth in an age where artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly renders human labour redundant. The real crisis isn’t just economic; it is existential.</p>.<p>We live in a world where there are more job seekers than jobs. This is not just a cyclical issue of economic downturns. It’s structural. AI has magnified this structural imbalance. It can do more, for less, and often better. When one person with the help of AI can do the work of ten, what happens to the nine? A strange silence fills the space where policy should speak. Governments tinker with skilling programmes, universities revise syllabi, but none addresses the fundamental dislocation underway. And the young, especially fresh graduates, find themselves caught in a world they were not prepared for.</p>.<p>For decades, education has been sold as a passport to prosperity. Get a degree, any degree, and you’ll find a job. But this promise has frayed. In India, nearly 42% of graduates under 25 are unemployed (CMIE, 2024). The situation is not much better in many parts of the developed world. It’s not just about supply-demand mismatch. It’s a value mismatch. Most formal education continues to reward repetition, compliance, and memory, all the things’ machines now do better. Creativity, synthesis, moral judgement, and emotional intelligence, the truly human capacities, remain undernourished. So, what should a young graduate do?</p>.The death of thought by AI prompt.<p>The first and most urgent shift required is psychological. No job is for life anymore. The linear career path – education, job, promotion, and retirement – is dead. In its place is the zigzag of projects, reinventions, collaborations, failures, and perhaps, something deeper – ‘vocation’. Graduates must understand that ‘learning to learn’ is the only skill with lasting value. The young must cultivate the courage to unlearn: to discard stale notions of prestige and ‘safe’ careers, and instead explore what problems are worth solving, not just what skills are worth selling.</p>.<p>Technology isn’t destiny. It reflects values. AI is not some cosmic force; it is built by people, trained on data, and shaped by incentives. The real question is: What kind of society are we building with AI? Tristan Harris, the former Google ethicist who now runs the Centre for Humane Technology, calls for a renaissance of humane design, technologies that augment human agency rather than automate human obsolescence.</p>.<p>Graduates from every stream, whether arts, sciences, or commerce, must ask: What is the human role in a machine world? The answers won’t come from textbooks but from interdisciplinary exploration. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum, for instance, argues that a liberal arts education is more essential than ever not to churn out ‘job-ready’ employees but <br>citizens capable of compassion, curiosity, and democratic judgement.</p>.<p><strong>Think local, act planetary</strong></p>.<p>The AI boom has exposed another stark reality. The world is connected, but the gains are not. Most AI tools are built for urban, Western contexts. But the crises of hunger, health, education, and climate disproportionately affect the Global South. Young graduates, especially the ones in India, must think of their work as service, not survival alone. The future is not in chasing scarce jobs, but in creating new forms of value rooted in local needs.</p>.<p>We are sold the myth of the solitary genius. The tech wizard who changes the world with a startup. But meaningful innovation rarely happens in isolation. It emerges in communities of trust, where different minds bring different strengths. Young graduates must, therefore, invest in relationships, collaborations, and networks of mutual aid. In an age of hyper-individualism, the future will belong to those who can build teams, share credit, and solve problems collectively.</p>.<p>Let us be clear. AI will continue to advance. It will outstrip us in efficiency, consistency, and speed. But it will never replace meaning, beauty, empathy, or love, the things that make life worth living. A young graduate, therefore, must not ask: What job can I get? But: What human role can I inhabit that AI never can?</p>.<p>This is not the end of work. It is the beginning of a new imagination of work, not as a market commodity, but as <br>an act of creation, care, and contribution. That, Keynes might agree, is the real future worth building.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a Bengaluru-based management professional, literary critic, translator, and curator)</em></p>
<p>In 1930, John Maynard Keynes prophesied that within a century, technology would advance so rapidly that we’d work just 15 hours a week. The rest, he said, would be ‘leisure filled with wisdom.’ It is 2025 now. We have the technology; indeed, machines now write code, generate poetry, diagnose illnesses, and trade stocks. But Keynes’ utopia has curdled into something else entirely; underemployment, precarity, and a deepening crisis of human worth in an age where artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly renders human labour redundant. The real crisis isn’t just economic; it is existential.</p>.<p>We live in a world where there are more job seekers than jobs. This is not just a cyclical issue of economic downturns. It’s structural. AI has magnified this structural imbalance. It can do more, for less, and often better. When one person with the help of AI can do the work of ten, what happens to the nine? A strange silence fills the space where policy should speak. Governments tinker with skilling programmes, universities revise syllabi, but none addresses the fundamental dislocation underway. And the young, especially fresh graduates, find themselves caught in a world they were not prepared for.</p>.<p>For decades, education has been sold as a passport to prosperity. Get a degree, any degree, and you’ll find a job. But this promise has frayed. In India, nearly 42% of graduates under 25 are unemployed (CMIE, 2024). The situation is not much better in many parts of the developed world. It’s not just about supply-demand mismatch. It’s a value mismatch. Most formal education continues to reward repetition, compliance, and memory, all the things’ machines now do better. Creativity, synthesis, moral judgement, and emotional intelligence, the truly human capacities, remain undernourished. So, what should a young graduate do?</p>.The death of thought by AI prompt.<p>The first and most urgent shift required is psychological. No job is for life anymore. The linear career path – education, job, promotion, and retirement – is dead. In its place is the zigzag of projects, reinventions, collaborations, failures, and perhaps, something deeper – ‘vocation’. Graduates must understand that ‘learning to learn’ is the only skill with lasting value. The young must cultivate the courage to unlearn: to discard stale notions of prestige and ‘safe’ careers, and instead explore what problems are worth solving, not just what skills are worth selling.</p>.<p>Technology isn’t destiny. It reflects values. AI is not some cosmic force; it is built by people, trained on data, and shaped by incentives. The real question is: What kind of society are we building with AI? Tristan Harris, the former Google ethicist who now runs the Centre for Humane Technology, calls for a renaissance of humane design, technologies that augment human agency rather than automate human obsolescence.</p>.<p>Graduates from every stream, whether arts, sciences, or commerce, must ask: What is the human role in a machine world? The answers won’t come from textbooks but from interdisciplinary exploration. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum, for instance, argues that a liberal arts education is more essential than ever not to churn out ‘job-ready’ employees but <br>citizens capable of compassion, curiosity, and democratic judgement.</p>.<p><strong>Think local, act planetary</strong></p>.<p>The AI boom has exposed another stark reality. The world is connected, but the gains are not. Most AI tools are built for urban, Western contexts. But the crises of hunger, health, education, and climate disproportionately affect the Global South. Young graduates, especially the ones in India, must think of their work as service, not survival alone. The future is not in chasing scarce jobs, but in creating new forms of value rooted in local needs.</p>.<p>We are sold the myth of the solitary genius. The tech wizard who changes the world with a startup. But meaningful innovation rarely happens in isolation. It emerges in communities of trust, where different minds bring different strengths. Young graduates must, therefore, invest in relationships, collaborations, and networks of mutual aid. In an age of hyper-individualism, the future will belong to those who can build teams, share credit, and solve problems collectively.</p>.<p>Let us be clear. AI will continue to advance. It will outstrip us in efficiency, consistency, and speed. But it will never replace meaning, beauty, empathy, or love, the things that make life worth living. A young graduate, therefore, must not ask: What job can I get? But: What human role can I inhabit that AI never can?</p>.<p>This is not the end of work. It is the beginning of a new imagination of work, not as a market commodity, but as <br>an act of creation, care, and contribution. That, Keynes might agree, is the real future worth building.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a Bengaluru-based management professional, literary critic, translator, and curator)</em></p>
